Speedy

We are sad to have lost Speedy this week. Speedy was one of my brother's cats that he adopted when living in Boston 12 years ago. Speedy and his brother Juno were adopted and taken in by the most loving human caretaker ever, Rich. He loves these cats with all of his heart, and it was really hard to watch him lose Speedy to liver cancer.
Pets are really hard to lose, I lost a cat several years ago when he wasn't yet one year old. It's hard to see them deteriorate and be in pain, they're just not having any fun anymore. They really become part of the family, and they always remain a part of the family even though they pass on.
As most things, the pain of losing a pet lessens with time, and you start to focus on the fun you had with them instead of the last few weeks/days of their lives. Laughter is the best medicine for things like this, it helps ease the pain of the loss. With that, I give you this story:

I was telling the kids the other day about Rich's cat Speedy passing away. I told them that Speedy got very sick and died. James replied, so innocently, "Upon the cross?"

We'll miss you Speedy!

Wait a minute... when did THAT happen?

Apparently James knows how to spell! We were pulling up to the hair cut store today and we parked in front of a different place, just a couple spaces over in the parking lot. James looked up at the sign above us and read off the letters in a quick pace, "G-o-l-d-e-n-t-a-n... what does that spell?"
I was so flabbergasted that I made him do it again. Sure enough, he repeated all of the letters, only with a slight stumble on the "t". Oh my gosh! I knew he was learning letters in school, but he really is LEARNING his letters! LOL.
Such a smart boy!

Another thing that has blown us away is Kaitlyn's resistance to nap in the afternoon. She's only two and a half and she's already starting to want to skip her nap. I remember that she transitioned from two naps to one really early, at eleven months, so maybe she's going to transition to no nap early too. Oh goodness. May the LORD help me cope. ;)

Christmas Gifts from James

James came home from school today with a few gifts for Mom and Dad. It was really hard for him to have to wait until Daddy got home from work for us to open them. After Nathan arrived at home, we asked him if we should wait until Christmas and he shook his head quickly, "No, you should open them now!"
One gift was a white oven mitt painted with his hand print as Santa wearing a red hat and having a white iridescent beard. James wrote his own name on the oven mitt too. ;)
The other was a wreath ornament that had been made by putting a series of rings on a piece of string and tied into a circle. So cute!
Kaitlyn probably won't be giving us a gift from school this year since she has missed the last week and half (only three actual days of school though) because of her fractured clavicle. She seems to be healing, but she still gets hit with pain if I lift her the wrong way or if she falls down. She doesn't seem to mind the brace, in fact, I think it makes her feel better to wear it. Poor thing.
Nathan just wrote the Christmas letter for this year: watch out. ;)

Slacker McSlackski

Oh my gosh I have been slacking on the blog! I do have excuses though! Here is a rundown of what has been going on in our house since before Thanksgiving:
-I got sick, horrible sinus infection and a cough for which I had to be on antibiotics for two rounds. I even had to cancel shoots and reschedule.
-Kona had to go to the vet for pancreatitis (sp?) and spent Thanksgiving there with them = lots of money.
-Rosco (one of our cats) started having blood in his urine so I decided that I should take both cats in for their waaaay belated check-ups (shots, bloodwork, etc.= lots of money again). Rosco ended up having to have surgery (today) to remove stones from his bladder. LAST WEEK, he had to have some teeth removed... he was born with an extra set of teeth on the bottom- only one molar was duplicated on each side. They were decayed and infected, so they had to come out. So he has had two surgeries in the last few weeks = lots of money. There go the Christmas presents. Ha.
-Kaitlyn fractured her clavicle (collar bone) after falling from the car. NO, we weren't moving... she was climbing up into her car seat as she does 3 times a day and slipped and fell. It was one of those slow motion things where I couldn't possibly have gotten to her fast enough, although I tried to get there fast enough. So she had to have x-rays and is now wearing padded straps that go around her shoulders like a backpack and then attach in the back in a big X between her shoulders. She should be fully recovered in a few weeks.

So besides all of that happening in our house, I've been swamped with work (a good thing) and have been trying to start an Etsy store along with a store on SmugMug. I am extremely excited to be moving into 2010, as I look forward to a new product line and the introduction of packages for Baby's First Year and for family portraits.

Whew!

We are really getting excited to go to Iowa pretty soon. Too bad it's so freakin' cold! HA! I look forward to great conversations with Beth, lots of fun in the snow with the kids (Nathan and Chris too), and drinking coffee with Marilyn and talking smack to Gary. We miss you, family in Iowa!

Turkey cookies!

Last night, our family went over to my parent's house for tacos. We had a good evening, even though I'm still trying to recover from this sinus infection that has had me dragging my feet all week.
Mom and I discussed the making of the pies for Thanksgiving day. She thought it would be fun to have the kids over to "help" make them. As we were getting the kids buckled into the car so we could return home, James asked Grandma if they could make Turkey cookies.
Mom and I looked at each other kinda befuddled and then she asked James, "Well, we can try. I don't know if I have everything... what do you need to make them?"
James says (sounding exactly like a TV commercial), "You need sugar cookie dough, white frosting, food coloring, chocolate chips and candy corn!"
That made Mom and I look at each other again and bust out laughing.
I asked James, "Did you see that on TV honey?"
"Yes," he said.
"On Noggin?"
"No, on Nick Jr.!"
Oh this kid cracks me up!

Mythbusters are a bad influence!

Nathan loves the show Mythbusters. I admit, I'm a huge fan too. We sometimes watch episodes with the kids, and James just loves it. He even has come to know names of the people on the show.
Apparently James really does pay attention because the other night we were sitting at the dinner table and James blurts this out, "When Carrie and Tory drank too much beeeeer, they got really sick."
Nathan and I just looked at each other. "Actually James, it was Grant and Tory, but yes, they did get sick from drinking too much beer."
"Remember that, James, remember that lesson." I said. :) LOL.

Happy Halloween!

Scary!

The kids and I stopped into one of those temporary Halloween stores a few days ago to try to find a Batman costume for James. After discovering that, like Target, they were out of all of James' size, we perused the rest of the store.
James wandered to the back of the store where there were three archways with spooky life-sized motorized "things". To get them to move, you pushed the big red button in front of them. I followed James and Kaitlyn followed me. James pushed the button in front of one of the zombies. His head turned, his eyes followed, and there was blood all over him like he had just hacked someone with an axe. James was fine, but Kaitlyn got one glimpse of this thing and LOST IT. She screamed so loud and turned bright red and started running away! My poor baby! I couldn't help but giggle a little bit though. ;)

Butterfly!

Today was the Methodist School's Fall Festival. I was working at James' class booth, the snow cone stand, and Nathan surprised me with Kaitlyn as a butterfly! I wish I would have seen how they painted this on! WOW!

Mr. The King returns!

When James and I flew to Minneapolis last month for Matt and Kari's wedding, I bought him The King in the Orlando Airport. The King is a car character from Cars the movie. It was new and cool to James because he has holographic eyes. The King went everywhere with us, and proved to be a great toy for James until we lost him at Sam and Mary Ann's house. Mary Ann told us that she would send it if she found it, but I didn't really thin there was a chance of her actually finding the car.
ALAS! She found The King and she also sent a new toy truck for James and a toy for Kaitlyn! Kaitlyn loves Jasmine, her Disney Princess from Alladin the movie.
Thank you Mary Ann!

Announcing the new website!

I'm so excited to announce that my new website is officially ON!
Please check it out!

www.meredithwilckephotography.com

I think my heart just melted... or tore in half.

Kaitlyn has been telling me, when I'm ready to leave her room at night, "Don't go bye bye Mommy, I neeeeed you!"
I asked Nathan yesterday if he had had her say that to him or not yet, and it just so happened that she tried to pull that trick on him that night. Nathan was getting ready to go out to watch football at a local watering hole when he came into her room to give her a kiss.
"Don't go bye bye Daddy," she says while grabbing him like she were about to fall into a pit of hot lava, "I need you!"
Nathan looked at me and we nearly fell onto the floor. Laugh? Cry? What do we do? It's so cute, it just melts my heart. I know that she is NOT really going to get hurt feelings when we leave, since other times she says bye without a problem and is a very independent little girl. I really don't know where this came from, but it's sooo sweet.

These kids keep me guessing!

James has been sick this week. He's had a bad cough, sore throat (that seemed to not last long) and a really high fever! My poor baby. It's so awful to look into your son's eyes and see pure exhaustion. He even fell asleep on the couch last night after dinner, something he never does. He seems to have turned the corner today though, with a better attitude and more energy to spend playing with Kaitlyn. The sparkle is coming back into those beautiful eyes of his! Luckily he didn't miss much school this week as they had a school break yesterday and today.
Kaitlyn pooped and peed on the potty last night, so James and I were sitting in the bathroom with her tonight to try to get a repeat performance. He started saying, "Go Kaitlyn! Go!" He then looked at me, raised his eyebrows and said with a nod of his head, "I'm cheering for her, you know!" I laughed out loud!

Kaitlyn is still being difficult at bed time. Last night when putting her to bed I told her that if she got out of bed, I was going to take Lovie away. Sure enough, she did get out of bed, and I caught her going into the bathroom. I put her in bed and took Lovie from her, and told her, "I'm going to turn off your nightlight now too. You need to stay in bed." She cried for a few minutes, but then she was quiet. Finally!
I went upstairs to check on her around 10:30 and found her asleep, but not in bed. She was on the floor just inside her room sound asleep!
The night just got more strange too... at 3:15 in the morning, I heard noise coming from James' monitor. I had to go upstairs to investigate, thinking that since James had fallen asleep on the couch pretty early, he thought that 3:15 was a good time to wake up for the day.
I was slightly baffled to find that the hallway light was on, and James door was open. His room light, however, was still off (he usually turns it on when he's up and playing in his room). I rounded the corner and walked into James' room ready to tell him to get back to bed. Instead, however, I found Kaitlyn in James' room! She was helping herself to James' puzzles at 3:15 in the morning! James was still asleep in his bed, running a fever and quiet as can be.
REALLY Kaitlyn?!? I told her to go get back in bed. After she crawled in, I told her, "Kaitlyn, it's still sleepy time, it's the middle of the night!"
"Ok Mom, I go night night!"
Thankfully that was all of the commotion for the rest of the night. :)

Bye Bye Naps?

James hasn't been napping very well lately, if at all. Once in a while he lays in bed quite easily and falls asleep, but most days now, he fights having to nap. It's bittersweet for me... watching my baby grow is wonderful, but I will miss my quiet time and MY naps. :)
Kaitlyn too, has been skipping some naps in the afternoon. It's extremely frustrating to me to think of her growing out of her nap already at the age of 2 and a half. No way. It can't be. I keep praying to God to help this phase stop and for her to keep up with napping. On the other hand, and there usually always IS another side, if she does nap, she takes forever to fall asleep at night. She never wants me to leave after I tuck her into bed (since I'm so awesome and all), and then she sits up there and plays with books in bed or toys on her floor. She's sneaky too... she's very quiet. If she hears me coming to talk to her, she runs back to bed! Stinker.
SO... maybe if the nap goes away it won't be the worst thing in the world, but I still want her to nap! She's just too young!

Kaitlyn has been enjoying school so much, and this morning when I dropped them off, she exclaimed, "I get to go to school toooo!" It is so sweet, and I love thinking about how far she came in just over one month, from crying at drop off to being excited to go see her friends.
When it is time for dismissal at school, my kids go to separate places to be picked up, so I have to go through the car pool line twice in different places. It's kind of a hassle, but no big deal really. I usually go get Kaitlyn first since she's younger and newer at the whole school thing, and James understands he needs to stay put until I drive up.
Kaitlyn makes me giggle when we pull up to get James and he gets in the car. She asks him so nicely, "How are you doing, James?" It's so cute!
She is also very consistent about telling someone when they've done a good job. "Good job singing, Mommy!" or "Good job, James!" It's so sweet, and I can only assume she gets that from her most wonderful role model... me. ;)

I'm Sorry Mommy!

Kaitlyn has been noticing when she hurts people, and usually says, "I'm sorry!" right away.
Sometimes, however, she means to hurt James. He does the same to her, of course, but she really knows how to taunt him. She takes things right out of his hands and then after he cries and I tell him to ask for it back nicely, he asks and she replies with, "NO!" It really is funny... but I feel so bad for James because he does a great job asking her for it back and then she totally denies him. She also likes to push him, hit him and throw things at him. Nice, huh?
James, too, has his moments where he shows aggression. For instance, if Kaitlyn takes something from him and he wants it back, he'll aggressively poke her or push her. It frustrates me to no end, and is one thing that Nathan and I need to work on with him... controlling his temper.
They both are very sweet about apologizing when they hurt me or Nathan or anyone else, but when it comes to each other they are total siblings about it. They say sorry, but don't really mean it. Ha.

Nice words instead.

Kaitlyn and James have been having a fun time playing together since they were apart for the weekend. Of course they are playing nice but also nagging at each other and "fighting". After Nathan had gotten home from work, James was playing like he wanted to sleep on the couch and he and Kaitlyn got into a bit of a grumble. Kaitlyn told James, "Go away!"
Daddy and I didn't like this, so Nathan went over to talk to the kids about using nice words instead. I clued Nathan in that James had told Kaitlyn to "go away" earlier today.
"James," Daddy asked him, "what are some nice words to ask Kaitlyn instead?"
"Kaitlyn, could I be alone?" he responded.
"That's a great one, James!" Daddy praised James.
"Kaitlyn, what are some nice words you could use with James?"
"Go away." She said.

LOL.

Saturday: A beautiful day in Minnesota

The day after Matt and Kari's nuptials, James and I walked over to Mom and Dad's hotel to have breakfast. We had breakfast there the day before, fancy and all, but expensive of course since it was a hotel. The four of us ate, I think we all started with cereal. James had TWO bowls of Fruit Loops, and when the bowl was left with floating tid bits and remaining milk, the waitress took it away without hesitation. James was shocked.
When she returned from the kitchen, James looked at her, put his arm up and did the "come here" motion with his entire hand instead of just his index finger. He said to her, "You took my bowl! I wanted my milk!" Oooh, too funny, we all cracked up. To appease him, she brought him another cereal bowl with more milk in the bottom for James to drink. Too funny.
Later, we took Mom and Dad to the airport for them to fly out to South Dakota and then we spent the remaining part of the day at Sam and Mary Ann's house for the "after" festivities. It was really nice to be able to talk to family after being so busy and distracted at the wedding and reception. We had a great time, with great conversations and great food. James and Will played all day together, and had a great time pretending to be firemen. The only negative part of Saturday was that we lost The King. OOOOOH NO. We looked and looked, but no The King. Poor kid.
We said our goodbyes to Kari and Matt to go home and pack for their honeymoon, and then it was time for us to go back to the hotel (now the Sheraton). James was really bummed to have to leave, so I bribed him. I told him... "We need to say goodbye to everyone and thank you, and then you can play with my phone on the way to the hotel." He took this literally and went up to every one, tapping them on the shoulder or arm and waving at them and telling them goodbye. Yes, everyone was giggling. It was so cute!

Congratulations Matt and Kari!

James and I got to attend the wedding of my cousin, Matt McClenahan to his love, Kari Thon. It was at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. The church was AMAZING. To sum up, James walked into the church and after about 10 minutes, looked up, and then said coolly, "Beautiful church." It was like he was a teenager! ;)
The ceremony was beautiful and James did a wonderful job sitting in the pew and staying (mostly) quiet. I had bought a new "Car" for him in the Orlando airport, The King, to play with for the weekend, and it seemed to do a great job of keeping him distracted.
Once the ceremony was over, we headed over to the reception at Nicolette Island. WOW! The site was stunning! The flowers were gorgeous and the candle lit table centers were fabulous. They had place cards for everyone, and James instantly fell in LOVE with "his" piece of blue paper with his name written in silver and a cute little green flower glued to it. It was his BFF for the rest of the night.
We sat with my parents and Dick, Bev, Courtney, Molly, Ryan and Sutton. We dined on delicious food, and even got to share James' gourmet Mac N Cheese for an appetizer. He was disgusted with it, but it was some of the best Mac N Cheese I've ever had. ;)
James took Grandma's camera and went around snapping photos of everyone around our table and then proceeded to the next table. However, by this time, my mom had taken her camera back and given James an iPhone to use for a camera. Oh geez. The people at the next table were laughing with James, as he was intent on getting every one's picture. So funny!
At one point I had to tell James to be quiet because Tom was giving a toast. He replied with, "But I'm scared of Tom making bread, Mom!" That made me giggle!
Grandma Kathy took James to the dance floor and broke it down with the live band for a while. I got out there long enough for James to dance about one song until he "powered down". He literally went from dancing one second (doing the tie flip) to a sunken moping child the next. He had had enough.
We retired to our hotel via a ride from Mom and Dad, an eventful and very fun day!

James and Mommy fly to Minnesota!

James and I flew to Minnesota today, without Daddy and Kaitlyn. This is my third trip away from home in the month of September, and it's beginning to wear on me. I am so glad, though that James and I have this time together, to spend some alone time with my sweet 4 year old boy.
Kaitlyn was so sick this morning, thankfully I hadn't planned on taking her with us. She came down with the 24 hour bug that James had earlier this week. Ick. That, of course, made me hesitant about leaving her for the weekend, but was confident that she'd get better soon and she and Daddy would have a great weekend together.
James and I had a blast taking the tram and walking through the airport in Orlando, even picked up some chocolate milk for him at Nathan's hot dog place. I gave James the choice of ice cream versus chocolate milk. He's insane. ;)
The flight was direct and uneventful, but pretty long for a 4 year old. He did really well, he watched shows the whole time. He did get bored though, sometimes he wanted to switch out the show mid way through, which is not really like him.
We arrived into Minneapolis on time expecting my parents to pick us up in their rental car. Dad had flown in three hours ahead of us, and then Mom flew in a few hours ahead of us. By the time they had gotten from the airport to the hotel in downtown Minneapolis, they didn't want to come and get us. James and I decided to take the Light Rail, it seemed pretty easy, a direct stop at the airport, and then a few blocks to our hotel once we got to the stop we needed downtown.
James, again, was thrilled with the tram ride that we took from the baggage claim area to the Light Rail station, and was even more excited when we got to do it all over again since I had forgotten his car seat at the bag claim. :(
The Light Rail was easy, as I thought, and James cracked up the people riding. We were talking with a college aged guy and girl, and they just adored James. They laughed WITH him the whole ride. The guy, at one point, told James he had excellent taste in shoes... they were wearing the same shoes!
We got to the hotel safe and sound, and when James walked into the room he said, "This is incredible!" Ha ha ha.
We feasted on a very belated dinner, of which James didn't eat much. I did. :)
We sat and "chatted" as much as you can with an over tired 4 year old, and then it was bed time.
I snagged a photo of James while we were at the hotel restaurant because that was the hotel that we were staying in when Nathan and I had told them that we were pregnant with James. Look how tired this boy is... poor thing!

Day to day stuff.

Well it's been about a week since I updated the blog... sorry.
I was on a work trip to Phoenix last weekend (shot a wedding)... one that was supposed to involve Nathan but didn't. He ended up staying home because he had forgotten to take the day off of work on Friday, and since he'd been in Greece for so long, he couldn't ask anyone else to cover for him. :( We were both bummed that he couldn't go.
The weekend went pretty fast for me, being super busy with the wedding. I was indeed lonely though, I'm not sure I remember the last time (if ever?) I ate by myself in restaurants 5 times in a row. The other thing that was completely weird to me... being in a hotel room and not having to verbalize ANYTHING! Ha.
The kids have been struggling with sicknesses this month, and so far there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. As soon as Nathan and I left for Greece, Mom (Grandma Kathy) had to take them into the doctor's office. They both had colds and ear infections and were sick and home from school pretty much the whole time we were in Greece. I just took them back to the doctor's office this afternoon to get re-checked. First of all because James threw up this morning (empty stomach thank goodness) for no apparent reason, second of all because Sandy wanted to check them again after two weeks. Turns out that Kaitlyn, the one with no symptoms, still has a really infected right ear. Gah. More antibiotics for her.
I'm hoping James gets better, from whatever it is that has manifested in his little body, before Thursday. He and I are supposed to fly to Minneapolis for Matt and Kari's wedding. Barring me being in the hospital... I'm going! James may have to stay home with Daddy and Kaitlyn though, we'll see.
The kids have each acquired funny sayings the last few weeks. Kaitlyn likes to say, "Hang on!" when I ask her to come to me. "No, Kaitlyn you don't tell Mommy to 'hang on' when I ask you to come to me," I tell her. Ha.
James has been saying, "The thing is..." about how he feels. "The thing is, Mom, I want to go to school!"
"Well, James, the thing is, you can't go to school after you throw up honey...." Ha.

Shopping in Santorini

Nathan and I actually shopped for the kids when we were in Greece. We'd see things that were cheesy and silly, and passed them up easily. We were choosy until we got to Santorini and needed to make some decisions. We saw a t-shirt and souvenir shop that had cuter t-shirts than any other store, but even then, we shopped around. After comparing t-shirts all over the island, we ended up going back to that store to purchase the shirts (and a cool ash tray!). We got James a blue t-shirt with neat looking white Greek style buildings on it, and got Kaitlyn a pink dress with three little kitties on the front that were all cuddled up and sleeping.
When we were in the Old Port of Fira (the place that they have the donkeys walking up and down giving rides to people), we saw the cutest little donkey puppets. Not hand puppets, but the kind that were attached to the fishing line and then you make them move with the wooden sticks at the top. The store we bought them from had some on display hooked up to a motor that made them move. They were so cute, they looked like they were dancing, so I was sold on those. We got one for each child, after I was told that it was silly to only get one and they would fight over it. I hate it when he's right. ;)
We also bought them some cute little beaded bracelets that actually fit their tiny wrists. James got a green one and Kaitlyn got a pink one, although that seems to be the standard color scheme these days.
Nathan thought it would be fun to give the kids a few other things as well, things that we didn't actually buy for ourselves, but were given along the way. First, we were given beach bags by the Hotel Portiani in Milos. They are very sturdy bags,dense enough to not have sand come through the fabric, khaki in color with blue drawstrings. They are large enough to fit several toys in them. Second, Nathan decided to give them our "Envoy" travel amenities bag that we got from US Air on our way to and from Athens. He took everything out of the little cinch bag except for the sleeping mask.
Do I even need to say this? Really... guess what their favorite things are... Yep, the bags we got for free and the best thing of all... the sleeping masks. Doh!

Speechless

James was sitting on the potty tonight before returning to bed. I was in the bathroom with him, and since his eyes had adjusted to the dim light of his room, I only turned on a dim light in the bathroom too.
I was a bit surprised when he told me, "I think I saw that your neck is red."
Hmmm. I didn't think I had gotten any sun recently, so that was a bit strange... I wondered why I would be red, and how could he see that in this light?
Then James said again, "I think your neck is red. That must be why you're a red neck."
WAIT, WHAT?
I really had to bite my tongue from laughing. I asked him, with a befuddled expression on my face, "Where did you hear THAT?"
"Oh, just a friend at school," he replied.
"Which friend?"
"Walker."
Oh, Walker is sooooo busted. ;)
... and so it begins... at the early age of 4. "I heard it from a friend."
Awesome. ;)

James has also started to become aware that what he says can be embarrassing. Nathan or I will sometimes hear him say something funny or strange and then ask him to repeat it. He'll quickly respond with something like, "Oh nevermind. Don't worry about it." This is another reason why I was a bit surprised when he actually told me about the above mentioned "joke" that he had heard.

Back to Athens, Round 2

September 10 continued...

We hopped our plane to Athens the morning of the 10th, and then bussed our way to the Athens Cypria Hotel near Syntagma Square. Nathan and I lucked out yet again… we figured out while we were riding the bus already that we were supposed to have purchased and validated our tickets before getting on the bus. Oops, we hadn’t even bought tickets, expecting to buy them on the bus (which had been standard practice throughout the islands). Luckily, we were not checked for tickets… the penalty was stiff. The free bus ride was not worth the anxiety that consumed me on that ride! I had the whole conversation scripted in my head, pleading ignorance, if we had gotten checked. Sigh.
Around 4 PM, fully armed with directions of where to go and where to eat from the concierge at the Cypria, we headed back to the Acropolis part of Athens. Since we had not gotten up to the Acropolis on our first attempt when we had first visited Athens, it was calling us back to come and explore.
Bob Barker would be sorely disappointed with Greece and their lack of controlling the pet and stray population… there were dogs and cats everywhere in Greece, we saw a lot more dogs in Athens than anywhere else. Some had owners, most did not. There were more cats all over the islands. I found them amusing, feeling sorry for them at the same time, but thankfully didn’t fall in love with any of them enough to bring them home. Ha.
I got some shots of a few dogs and cats around the islands, and then some of a few dogs down at the entrance to the Acropolis. Nathan went to buy our tickets, so I needed something to do. Ha.
The reason I’m mentioning the dogs and cats it because I got some of the funniest shots of one dog up at the top of the Acropolis. He was having a snooze, dead to the rest of the world, while lying on a wall atop the city of Athens. I thought it was hilarious! Nathan, of course, made fun of me for shooting the crap out of the dog laying up on the wall. ;)
The Acropolis was amazing! It only took second place to dogs adorning the plaza and walls. We timed it perfectly, climbing up just in time to see the sun start to descend over the city. I got some great shots, and Nathan studied the inner-workings of the whole restoration process. Every single last part of that building that had fallen or been taken off had a number on it. They knew exactly where every piece was to go when putting it back together. Totally amazing!
There was a large modern open air theater on the grounds of the Acropolis that we could see down into. We got to hear an orchestra preparing and rehearsing for a concert later that evening. What an amazing sound! We recorded some of the music being played, it was one of those moments that I’ll think about once in a while as one of my favorite memories of Athens!
We proceeded over to the Old Agora after the Acropolis, something Nathan appreciated more than I did, but nonetheless, it was amazing as well! He read every sign he came across, absorbing all of the information like a sponge. The only thing on my mind was the fact that I had almost used up every last frame of memory that I had brought for my 5D camera. :0 I was rationing shots, trading out my small camera for the standard shots at this point. ;)
We headed over to a restaurant that was recommended to us from the concierge at the hotel (Filistros, or something like that). It was difficult to find this restaurant, it was in the part of Athens that was really only walked by the locals. That was the main reason we went to this restaurant, we asked for something that would be special for our only night in Athens, something the locals love… and we got it!
We dined on the roof top terrace of the restaurant, and we lucked out having gotten there before the larger parties that had reservations. It looked straight at the Old Agora and up to the Acropolis. Soon, as the sun set, the buildings were aglow for the evening. We celebrated the end of our trip with a fabulous bottle of Greek red wine. Nathan had eggplant rolls with a minced meat filling, and some of the best fried potatoes I’ve ever had. We decided that they were like hashed browns smothered with a smoked cheese with tomatoes, peppers and onions. Oh my…. I ordered the veal cooked in a clay pot with a tomato sauce, feta and black olives. It was fantastic! The restaurant was so wonderful, we gave huge thanks to the gal that recommended it to us. She was a bit jealous, saying that she’d actually never had been there, but needed to go. We thanked her immensely!
After we paid our bill we started our walk back to the hotel. We decided to walk the one metro stop instead of taking the metro. We walked back past the entrance of the Acropolis, now stunningly lit beautifully against the night sky, and also walked past the museum that we had been to on our previous trip to Athens. We saw the herds of people walking in to the theater that we had looked down into earlier in the evening, being some of the only people walking away from the Acropolis. It surprised me that it was nearing 9 PM and everyone was just arriving. Surely the concert was to go until 11 PM or even later.
I snapped my last remaining shots of the street vendors selling roasted corn (very weird) and roasted nuts and suckers. We walked back towards Syntagma Square and wound our way back to the hotel. Nathan found it highly amusing that there were police in full riot gear near the square… just in case. ;) I was comforted by the aggressive presence of the police watching out for us wherever we were. It's quite humorous seeing the illegal street vendors having to pack up their stuff within a minute and run from the cops to resist getting caught!
We stopped at a busy restaurant near our hotel and had our last Mythos beers, and after exhaustion set in, we headed to our room. The next day would be a long travel day, and we needed sleep.
I looked forward to the airplane for one reason specifically… to be able to flush the toilet paper instead of having to put it in the waste basket. I never did get over that. ;)
We had a smooth and uneventful trip home, and seeing those kids snuggled comfortably in their beds when we got home was the best sight of all. We missed them so much!

The island of Santorini

September 8, 2009

We arrived in Santorini at 1:30 AM, very early on the 8th. Since we had to take the late ferry from Milos, we were cheated out of a whole day on Santorini, and then had to arrive and find our hotel in the middle of the night.
We took the bus to Fira, one of the main towns of Santorini. We decided to stay in Fira because of it’s central location on the island, making it easier for us to go out and about on day trips. The Hotel Loucas was the place we picked, and not wanting a repeat performance of the arrival on Sifnos of climbing up steep hills to our hotel, I decided to call them for directions. I was greeted on the phone by the employee (manager?) of the hotel, and he tried to describe to me where to go. I was frustrated because I was roaming on my phone, and also frustrated because I could NOT see the National Bank that he was talking about as a landmark. He agreed to come meet us in 10 minutes and take us back to the hotel with him. Oh good, I thought, no need to stress now, he’s coming to get us.
We sat down, exhausted, by the taxi station of Fira, waiting for George to come get us. I was expecting a car, now of course I understand would have been ridiculous, but instead, George walked up to us with a bit of peevishness on his face.
“The bank is right there.” He scolded me, “You could have asked ANYONE and they could have told you where the bank was. I’ve been waiting there for you for 5 minutes!”
“We looked for it and couldn’t find it,” I said to him calmly. It was, after all, back in a recessed part of the street, and even Nathan couldn’t see it.
“You could have asked anyone.” He said again.
I can’t remember exactly what I said back to him, but you could have cut the air with a knife the tension was so bad. I said something like, “We don’t know where we ARE, we are in a foreign country!” I should have added, “… and it’s 2 AM and the only people here strange homeless-looking hotel-offering guys out here and drunk people who don’t speak English, and you expect me to talk to them?” Ugh, what a jerk.
Anyway, he walked us to the hotel and even helped us with our bags. We had to go up stairs, through alleyways, down stairs and then down even more stairs to get to our room. By the time we were checked in and down to our room, I had made amends with George being the one to lightly chatter about the weather in Santorini with a smile on my face. He had said it had been windy and cold, but was hoping for a nicer day tomorrow.
Our room was beautiful! When we had made our reservations, all of the “normal” rooms were already booked, so we decided to splurge a bit on the suite. It really was amazing! We had a sitting area with a leather couch, TV, coffee table, and then on the other side, a large bed with a white gauzy canopy and a very large bathroom. The walls were white with a dark grey faux rock back wall. Finally we had room to spread out! We got settled in, showered, and then I couldn’t sleep. Ha. I think it was nearing 4 AM when I finally drifted off to dreamland.

Our first morning in Santorini was pretty lazy. We slept in as long as we could until we were going to miss breakfast, so then we rolled out of bed and climbed up the stairs to the Aris restaurant (part of the hotel). We had breakfast and then headed down to our room to relax for a while until our sailing adventure later that day.
We were scheduled to sail with Captain Ted of Santorini Sailing, whose company had been, among other accolades, rated #1 thing to do while in Santorini in 2007 by Departures Magazine. I was STOKED to go on the boat, however really apprehensive since I suffer from motion sickness. The seas were looking angry too! Yikes. Captain Ted, although born in Greece, spent his childhood in New Jersey. He later returned to Greece and married an Australian gal named Dina. They have two kids, 4 and 18 months, very similar to us!
We got ready to go on our sailing adventure, and as soon as we climbed up the ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN steps from our room to the top of the hotel, I realized that I had forgotten my Dramamine in the room. There was no way I was going to go back down there and walk back up that insane amount of stairs, so we headed over to the nearest Pharmacy to get some of their motion sickness meds.
We had some time to spend in Fira before our transport to the port where our boat was scheduled, so we grabbed a gyro sandwich from a tiny, very crowded, main street restaurant. It was the type of place where you walk in, order, get your food and leave, pulling up a seat wherever possible. The gyro was good, but still, even in GREECE, it wasn’t as good as the midnight gyro in Ames, Iowa. ;)
We walked around Fira town for a bit to waste some time, taking photos of the insanely beautiful scenic view of the caldera, and being entertained by a local Greek trying to sell postcards. He looked homeless, even though I’m still not sure if he was or not, and was hassling Nathan and me about putting our empty drink cans into the trash with a point of his finger. Ok, man. We get it, the trash is THERE. Thanks. We’ll be sure to do that. Now leave us alone! ;)
I needed to get some coffee to combat the exhaustion that I was sure the Dramamine equivalent was going to inflict, so we went into a hotel right there to grab a coffee before heading out to sail. When we came back to the meeting place for our transfer, about 10 minutes later, the rest of the group had arrived, and we were ready to go.
We piled in a van with two other American couples getting ready to go sailing too. We thought that they were going to be on our boat with us, but they ended up sailing on Captain Ted’s other boat with another captain. They were entertaining, laughing about their trip so far, about hotel mix ups and the craziness that they had experienced in Mykonos. Nathan and I were reassured that we had made the right decision in going to smaller, less touristy islands previous to our stop in Santorini. They said Mykonos was absolutely crazy.
We boarded our catamaran with Captain Ted and crew, and then 4 other couples for a total of 10 guests. We had a mix of Americans, one Australian couple, and one of the guys that was married to an American girl was from London. We all were introduced quickly and the party began… the white wine from Santorini and the Mythos beer started flowing like the sea we were on. ;) Let the fun begin!
Captain Ted was awesome, giving us the “rules” of the boat and then serving as our tour guide around the island. We got to know a lot about the other couples on the boat, and before we knew it, we were anchoring down for people to jump off of the boat and swim for a while. I was still in my clothes, and even though I was much more interested in taking photos rather than swimming, I went and changed into my swimsuit to join in the “fun”. I was told that the water was warm, and I, being a dumb a** , believed them. They were all LIARS! ;) It was so cold that my body had a hard time breathing once I jumped in, almost like my lungs were in shock. I stuck it out though, like someone else said, “If you wait a few minutes, your body will go numb and you won’t feel it anymore.” Ha ha ha ha. He was soooo right.
After that experience, I was the first one to change OUT of my suit and give up the swimming for the rest of the day. I happily retired my bathing suit and reacquired my camera for the rest of the sail. That made me happy.
We spent the rest of the evening sailing, stopping one other time to swim in the hot springs (neither Nathan or I didn’t get in the water this time) with another few boatloads of people (not small groups either, more like herds of people), and then once everyone climbed back on board, we headed over to another scenic area to anchor down, have dinner and relax.
Dinner was served to us by the two crew members, one being a girl from Australia (Nicole) and a Greek guy (didn’t get his name). We started with pasta salad with a bruchetta type of sauce, Greek salad with feta and olives, an amazingly good smoked eggplant dip (white eggplant- a specialty of the island), grilled clamari, huge prawns, and bread. The main course was oven roasted vegetables, grilled pork and chicken. It was all very good, not extraordinary like I had heard it was going to be, but very good.
The alcohol was flowing by now, and we all had a very good time chatting with Ted and the other guests. At one point, Nathan was talking with the Greek crew member about Mousaka. Nathan told him that he had loved the Mousaka in Vathy, Sifnos, and the guy agreed, he had had the best Mousaka of his life in Vathy. That made Nathan happy, and we never did try Mousaka again, not expecting it to mount up to the quality that he had eaten in Vathy.
A few things that Captain Ted told the group was that Greeks are different than other countries of the world… they don’t export their best home made products, they export their second best and keep the best for themselves. ;) That sounds right to me. The second thing was that one of the countries that imported most of their olive oil was Italy. Amazing!
After dinner we started sailing back towards the port, all the while enjoying the sunset. I was standing up taking photos while we were moving slowly along the sea being punched by waves from left to right. The sea was indeed angry, and nothing about the sailing trip was smooth. I was extremely grateful that I had taken the appropriate medicine, and came very close to giving it to others on the boat. They weren’t doing well, but I’m happy to say that I don’t think anyone ended up physically getting sick.
Anyway, I was standing up taking photos when I was unexpectedly LAUNCHED onto my side, down onto the American and British couple. It happened before I could think, and although I was entirely embarrassed, it wasn’t anything I would have had control over. I felt horrible, luckily we were all okay, and the other girl was credited for “catching” me. ;)
The sailing trip was unbelievable, very fun, very interesting but very rocky! I definitely would recommend it to others, but bring your Dramamine! I was actually pretty surprised that he hadn’t canceled our sail like he had the morning sail, but thankful, so thankful, that he hadn’t! It was worth it!
I went to bed super early that night, I was wiped out from not sleeping much the night before and the rest of my energy had been zapped from all the excitement of the evening.

September 9, 2009

After breakfast on the 9th, we decided to go to the Old Port of Fira. There are three ways to get there, one being a long walk down a ton of stairs, a hired donkey ride on said stairs, or a gondola. We opted for the gondola, and somehow lucked out with perfect timing… it only ran every twenty minutes, but we hopped on immediately and there was absolutely no line. When we reached the bottom, we marveled at the line waiting to go UP. Nathan figured out that the line going up was from the people being dropped off at the old port by the cruise lines, and those people wanting to go up to Fira to look around and connect to the rest of the island.
We roamed around the old port for a while, looking at everything and doing a bit of shopping. We wandered into a store that caught my attention, and ended up spending a good amount of money on some souvenirs. I can’t mention what those were, as they may or may not be gifts for people. ;) We were happy to find those souvenirs, and we had the store ship them to us instead of us having to cart them home. Best money I’ve ever spent, right there. Ha.
The old port wasn’t all that entertaining, so we decided to hitch up the gondola back to the main town of Fira. Again, totally lucked out… no line going up, we walked right on… but when we got up there, there was an enormous line of people waiting to go down to the port. Someone up above was on our side!
We headed back to the hotel to shower and reset ourselves for our night out in Oia (pronounced ee-ah). We were told not to miss this town, but especially to see the sunset from this part of the island. The couple from Tmapa that we had met in Sifnos at the beginning of our trip had told us to go early, and to go to the Sunset café for dinner and the sunset. The two couples from the transfer bus to and from Ted’s sailing adventure told us to eat at Dimitri’s in Amoudi in the old city below Oia. Hmmm, what to do… what to do…. We decided to go down to Amoudi, but the problem was that it, like the old port of Fira, had a huge set of stairs to climb down, but no gondola. The couples had given us the advice to go down the stairs and taxi our way up. Smartest people ever! We did just that, and on our walk down the insane amount of steps, we saw people climbing up. They were absolutely insane! One American guy even told us, “Don’t do this! It’s horrible!” We told him of our idea to take a taxi and he praised that idea.
We were told to get a reservation at Dimitri’s, and tried to have the concierge at the hotel call for us earlier, but she couldn’t find the phone number for the restaurant anywhere. This is why we headed down to the small fishing port so early. We found Dimitri’s restaurant at the very end of the line of tavernas in Amoudi, and it ended up being right next to Sunset café. Turns out that the couple that told us to dine there forgot to mention that it was in Amoudi and not Oia. I didn’t know which to pick, so I asked one of the locals working at his own shop right there on the waterfront (I knew he was fluent in English because he had offered to hold my sunglasses while I shot photos- I had the glasses held in my mouth). I said to him, “Which restaurant do you like better? Dimitri’s or Sunset café?” Trying to not pick sides, he told me, under his breath “Probably Dimitri’s.” Settled. We headed over to Dimitri’s and made a reservation for 7 PM. Then we just had nearly 4 hours to spend in this tiny little place. Ugh.
There was a small graveled pathway leading away from Dimitri’s and around the corner of the waterfront. We decided to follow the path for a while. The shore consisted of about a 10 foot cliff of enormous black lava rocks just below us being smashed against by the rough sea waves. Other people had the same idea of walking this path. We eventually we ended up at the dead end of that path with sunbathers (stupidly and desperately sitting there soaking up rays with intense wind whipping against them), other tourists and even a few people snorkeling in the clear water. The water was beautiful! It was a stunning color of turquoise blue, and just beyond the immensely saturated color stood a gigantic rock, proudly jutting up from the water like it was it’s own Mt. Everest. I shot a ton of photos, and was extremely grateful at that point that I had decided to bring my wide angle lens. What a site!
We successfully but sloooowly wasted time around the waterfront, walking back and forth, shopping a little, shooting photos, etc. We sat at a small café that had music blaring to have a drink… our standard pick me ups… Nathan had a Red Bull and I had a frappe. We watched the bartender/waiter sit at the table next to us playing backgammon against a friend while juggling being the waiter whenever someone new would approach the bar. I asked their permission to take their photo of them playing the game, and they agreed. The waiter piped up and said to me, “You could title this, ‘Hard work in Sanroini!’” and he gave me a pretty good chuckle.
We went to the restaurant a bit earlier than our reservation since we were desperately bored and tables were available. We had effectively stalled our dinner long enough to be able to dine while the sun was setting.
We sat down at table that was on the edge of the waterfront with about at 2 to 3 foot drop to the water. Our table was so close to the drop off, Nathan insisted that we scoot my side of the table just about an inch or two away from the edge. Suddenly an image of me leaning on the table to get a good shot and me falling into the sea below shot through my head. Good idea, honey.
The main draw for Dimitiri’s restaurant is the fish that they serve, and the fact that you go back to the kitchen and select your own fish from the supply that they have for the evening. Nathan wanted to get the Black Sea Brimm that the Americans had suggested we get, but they were sold out of it. We decided to split a large grouper filet, and for sides we got eggplant dip and fried zucchini. We selected the house red wine to drink. Dinner was okay, I was pretty disappointed when our fish was overcooked and dry, but everything else about the meal was good. The sunset was absolutely unbeatable, stunning and priceless… all those cliché things. We ate, drank, and watched she sun set over the bay of Amodi, all the while I was snapping pictures of course!
We took a taxi, as planned, back to Fira after dinner. Nathan tried to push me to walk up the gigantic set of stairs back to Oia, but I had nothing to do with that. The 137 steps of the hotel almost killed me every time, I couldn’t imagine walking up 300.
Once we got back to our hotel, I parked my rear in the bar while Nathan went down to the room to change clothes. I shot a few pictures of the bar with my small camera because it was so insanely lit with blue lights, and decorated with backlit tables. However, the prices of the drinks reflected the stunning location and view of the caldera, so we decided to try a different bar up further than our hotel, the Tropical bar. They advertised Happy Hour, so we took advantage of that, but she only had a few certain drinks for a discount. Nathan had Alfa beer, and I had a tequila sunrise. It was so strong I couldn’t drink it… but the bartender was super nice, a US native from Santa Barbara. We had plenty to talk about! She had been in Greece for 20 years but frequently went back to Cali to visit.
I was so tired that I headed back to the hotel and left an unhappy Nathan back at the bar without me. He watched the Greece vs. Maldovia soccer game, downed another beer and then came back to the hotel. We were both exhausted and kinda grumpy! Too bad it was our last night on Santorini. ☹

September 10, 2009

We were up early in the morning getting ready to check out and leave the Loucas Hotel in Santorini. We had a flight to catch to take us from the island back to Athens for one night before we were to head home.
Since we arrived at 2 AM, we had not officially met the porter that worked at the hotel, but we had seen him around since staying there. He gave me the creeps, eying me one time when I was in the office without Nathan. I had my huge camera around my neck and he was staring at me. After about a minute of the uncomfortable feeling that he was staring at me, I turned to him and shot him a look like, REALLY? He flashed his smile at me, grinning ear to ear, showing me all of his crooked yellow teeth. Shivers…. Yikes.
The porter proved his usefulness the morning we checked out though, hauling our huge suitcases, one at a time, first to the office and then all the way through the town, up the stairs and then back down to the taxi meeting place. From the office to the meeting place, he literally hauled them all at once. He treated his body like he was a camel, literally having my large camera bag around his neck and rolling both of our huge suitcases. I honestly do not know how this guy did it… but he was totally against me or Nathan helping in any way. Needless to say, he earned a LARGE tip. I really wish I would have taken a video of him hauling all of this stuff… first of all for the pure insanity of it, second of all, to record all of the tourists STARING at him while hauling all of our stuff. They guy is certifiably insane, and that was the type of gazes he was getting! Ha.

The island of Milos

September 5, 2009

Milos held lots of treasures for us, visually speaking anyway.
We started our first day on Milos with a taxi ride to Plaka. Once we got into the town, we looked around a bit, did some meandering through the white buildings and narrow passage ways, and then decided to climb the stairs to the Kastro (church). Oh what a hike. My my my, my LEGS were killing me. We met an Irish woman who passed us (I was huffing and puffing away while Nathan was ready to keep going), and she was wearing flimsy shoes while I was enthusiastically wearing my Ecos. I’m still not really sure how she did that, even though we found out during our conversation at the top, that she has made that climb many times. She’s crazy. ;)
I was stunned when we got to the top, took a ton of pictures, naturally. It was great that it was later in the afternoon too, so the sun wasn’t directly above us, it was giving us some directional light. Very pretty!
After the climb up, we thought walking down to the catacombs would be a spectacular idea. We walked for about 10 to 15 minutes down through a town called Tripiti and followed the signs to the catacombs. Here is where we faulted: Even though the sign said it was closed, we walked down the 50 stairs to get to the catacombs anyway. Whaddayaknow? It’s closed. DUH. Ha ha ha. Oh well, it’s all in the adventure… or so I thought.
I was so mad and exhausted after that climb, that Nathan left me on the old road to rest while he walked up to the Ancient Theatre, the supposed location of the finding of Venus de Milo. I was happy to stand in one spot and breathe for a few minutes shooting photos, of course. ;)
We kept walking down to our destination, a town called Klima, that supposedly had a colorful scenery of painted doors on the houses, and a beach with a scenic view. We walked for about 30 minutes from the catacombs down to Klima on the street, with sore toes and aching knees. We did make it though, and feasted on the scene with our sense of sight. I knew I wanted to be in Klima for sunset, so we had timed it perfectly!
I shot a lot of the waterfront from the dock out in the harbor, and the we walked up to what we think was the only restaurant in the town, the Panorama Restaurant. We were greeted by the hefty, not so happy looking, wife of the chef, and led to our table overlooking the coastline and small town. We checked out the menu and decided what we wanted to order… only to get a shake of the head from the waitress. She then went through their plentiful menu and pointed out about only 7 ot 8 of 50 items that they had on their menu. The cook, I think, the husband of the not-so-friendly waitress, came over to talk us into ordering the fish. He flashed a very nice (although missing a top tooth!) smile at me, and with broken English, told us, “It’s very good, very good fish.”
Nathan jumped at that idea right away, and after about 20 seconds of hesitation on my part, I agreed… fish it was! We also ordered tzatziki, a dip that we commonly find on gyros in the US, made of Greek yogurt, garlic, cucumber and salt. The cook thanked us immensely for ordering the fish, like it was his pride and joy. He also told Nathan while Nathan was returning from the bathroom, that his tzatziki was home made, definitely not store bought. It really was the best we would have on the entire trip.
Our fishes were served whole, fully cooked, but lying on the plate still holding on to their surprised 0 mouths and glazed over eyes. This is what went through my mind, “DANG IT! I knew I shouldn’t have ordered the fish, I forgot that this is how Europeans do fish. Now how do I cut this thing? I know I’ve seen it done on the Food Network.” Ha ha. I still didn’t do it very well and tried to ask the cook if he would filet it for me, but all he did was bring me an extra plate and a large spoon. Hmmm… not much luck.
We dined on fish and Mythos beer and enjoyed watching the sun set over Klima. It was a beautiful sight, and very enjoyable to me to hear four different languages being spoken right there on the veranda. English, Greek, Italian and German was spoken, all right within 20 feet of each other. Brilliant!
We took a taxi back to Adamas and called it a night in the sweat box of our room. Yes, there was an AC, but it cooled the immediate two feet in front of the unit, no where near where our bed was located. If not for mosquitoes or the noise of the center square (mostly from children playing on the playground across the street from our hotel at 10 PM), we would have left our french doors open all night.

September 6, 2009

The next day, which would have been Sunday the 6th, we beached it! After all of that walking, we wanted to sit sit sit all day on our rumps. We started with a taxi ride to Paleochori, a beach that was recommended by the Lonely Planet book, and by the hotel Portiani. Nathan was in need of a new book, so I asked the taxi driver if he knew of a book store in Paleochori that might sell English books. He looked at me, a little befuddled, not really understanding me, OR thinking I was a total moron. When we arrived at the beach, I then understood that it was the later. Paleochori consisted of a few tavernas on the beach with rooms and beach chairs to rent… and that’s about it.
When we were driving into the beach town, something was different about it that we didn’t expect. The beach was covered in fog! The cliffs of the beach were in their own little cloud of fog, and the tide was so high it was washing up to the foot of the beach chairs. Ugh… we thought that maybe we had made the wrong decision of where to spend our beach day… too bad our taxi had dropped us off and already bolted back to Adamas. Thankfully he had given us a piece of paper with the taxi company phone number on it… busses didn’t even attempt to come to Paleochori.
We decided since we were stranded to hang out for a while and look around. We walked along the rocky beach, through the water at parts, and came to a better part of the beach that hadn’t been consumed by the tide yet. I snapped a few pictures of the fog covered cliffs, and then it was gone… it dissipated within 10 to 15 minutes. Amazing! The sun was bright, the water was brilliantly clear but cold, and only Nathan got in. He threatened me a bit to get in… to no avail. ;)
We enjoyed lunch at the taverna located just up the stairs from where we had rented chairs, and then we headed out (via taxi) to another beach named Agias Kiriakis (Ag. Kiriaki). We had expected the same driver to come pick us up, not really realizing that the paper phone number he had given us was for the company and not his personal phone number. We were surprised to see a woman driver come to get us, and when she heard our destination (Ag. Kiriaki and NOT Adamas), she looked like someone had just thrown a drink on her at a bar. Her body language seemed to say, “Well, dang it. I just wasted MY flipping TIME.” Ugh, guilt consumed me, but whatever. They do pricing for taxis a bit differently on their small islands, they have a set fee for going from one place to another, they don’t use meters. SO, we ended up having to pay her extra, but OH WELL. Ha. We got to our destination, that’s all that mattered. Our taxi driver had us holding our breath on the way though… the road leading to and FROM Ag. Kiriaki was one lane, sunken down about 6 feet into the ground, and graveled, not paved. I don’t think I took a breath for about two minutes solid, and the whole time had my foot on my imaginary brake pedal in the back seat of the taxi. ;) I just knew we would end up colliding with an oncoming car. YIKES!
Ag. Kiriaki was interesting… it definitely was NOT a tourist haven, it was full of locals that knew how to drive through the entrance/exit to the beach. The only reason we ended up there is because the girl at the font desk of the Portiani had told us to go there if we had the chance. It was even smaller than Paleochori! It wasn’t a sandy beach, it was rocky. Full of stones from bright white smoothed over stones to black pebbles. It really was amazing to see, but man, my feet sure didn’t like it. Ouch! It was a catch 22 with my Reefs… walk with them on and get stones in your shoe, or walk with them off and walk ON stones. Either way wasn’t too fun. Ha.
There was a bar on the beach called the Banana Bar, a very cute little place that was tiki-like. There were Greeks swarming all over, either lying on their beach chairs, swimming in the frigid water, or playing paddle ball (the Greeks sure like their paddle ball!).
We hung out there for the rest of the afternoon, me in the shade, Nathan in the sun. I still got sun even though I was under the umbrella reading my Twilight series, covered in SPF 45. No wonder those Greeks are so tan! Geez.
Once we were ready to go, the same gal taxi driver came to pick us up (we’d have someone call for us from the restaurant- pretty good scheme!). I wasn’t all too happy that it was her coming back; she seemed peeved the first ride, and she seemed peeved to have to come back too. We did a very good job washing off our feet, but even on rocky beaches, it’s hard to remove ALL of the debris. She wasn’t too impressed with us… dumb Americans. Ha.
We navigated our way through the one lane exit/entrance of sunken gravel road again, and then we were on our way to Adamas. We spent our evening there, walking the coast line, watching the natives and the tourists, and feasting on what seemed to be the best pizza I’ve ever had in my entire life. Not joking. It was amazing… pan pizza style with a buttery garlic crust, topped with all kinds of goodies. I’m salivating just thinking about it. Ha.
We did some window shopping and browsed through a few stores, thinking about getting some trinkets for the kids, but never did buy anything.
We spent our last night in Milos in our sweat box of a room, falling asleep with cold bottles of water resting by our heads, on the backs of our necks. It was going to be an early morning with our boat to Santorini at 10:25.

September 7, 2009

The next morning, we woke up, had breakfast and got packed up to catch our boat at 10:25. We headed over to the port hauling all of our stuff to find out that our boat had been canceled due to a problem with the weather. What? Huh? What do you mean canceled? What do we do NOW?
We asked around and found out that we were supposed to deal with Sophia’s Travel agency, so we patiently waited in line for new tickets on the late ferry (much larger boat so the weather wasn’t an issue). After waiting for 20 to 30 minutes, it was finally my turn. Unfortunately, the system that sold the tickets was down, and the gal couldn’t issue the tickets. Awesome. This ended up being the case for most of the day, we kept checking back, kept waiting in line, and finally, Sophia told us to just come back at 8 pm. Poor thing was ready to pull her hair out from the stress of the day and dealing with people trying to get to places with canceled boats. I truly felt sorry for the lady!
The best part of our having to wait in line at Sophia’s was meeting a couple from England, honeymooners, Richard and Rachel. It was wonderful to be able to talk to a couple so freely, and listening to their accent was thouroghly entertaining. We found that we would all be on the same ferry that night, which was fun to look forward to!
Richard and Rachel told us to go to Sarakinico with our newly found day to explore more of Milos. They described it as “not to miss” and “you would love it, it’s great for photo” type of place. We were grateful for the tip, as we had NO idea what to do with the hours we now had to spend waiting for our ferry. We pointed them towards Plaka and the climb to the Kastro up top, warning them that it was a hefty climb, but worth it.
We dropped our luggage back at the hotel, rearranged some things and then headed out to Sarakiniko. We didn’t really know what to expect, but we thought we’d spend a few hours there, get some lunch, etc. We were wrong! It was incredibly windy, and the sand and salt painfully whipped against our skin and stuck to my photo filter immediately (we later found out that it was not windy and such when Rachel and Richard were there). There was nothing there, no settlement of any kind, no tavernas even! Someone could really make a fortune there setting up a grab-n-go type of facility!
Despite the painful whipping salty air and sand in our eyes, Sarakiniko was unbelievable! I have never seen such a site, etched cliffs of pure white rock, beautifully contrasting with the raging aquamarine sea water. It was gorgeous, and it was a lot of fun to climb around and explore. There were caverns and tunnels to walk through, and a very small beach of which some tourists, not us, had planned on taking advantage. They surely had their sunbathing aspirations squashed upon arrival finding the angry sea and wind.
We took the bus back to Adamas when we were done exploring Sarakiniko, and then took a rest for a while in the lobby of our hotel. We had internet access there, which was wonderful, and I even attempted a nap for about an hour. We still had hours to spare… what to do… what to do….
We decided to go see Apallonia, the other port town of the island. There wasn’t a whole bunch to see there, but we walked around the town anyway. There were churches on either end of the bay, so we headed around to the one that was on the West side. We found a beautiful scene overlooking the ocean, but the wind was too unbearable to remain for a long period of time. I got some pics, and off we went, back towards the main part of the town.
We took a taxi back to Adamas (we lucked out as there was one dropping people off in Apollonia, so we flagged him down to take us back), FINALLY got our tickets for the ferry (at a different travel agent) and had dinner at the restaurant by our hotel. I had pizza, still drooling over the thought of the pizza I had the night before at the adjacent restaurant. We enjoyed our meal and then we headed over to the boat.
We met up with the British couple and exchanged stories about our adventures that day. They were sad to hear that Sarakinico had been so windy, but happy to know we enjoyed it and got great photos. We all sat together on the ferry at a table that had chairs facing each other. We chatted nonstop for three plus hours about House and other similar interests until we got to Santorini. We laughed a lot, exchanging stories and opinions, and having a few beers, anything to keep us awake. We arrived in Santorini at nearly 1:30 AM. We were all extremely tired. We all laughed at how the books suggest taking a slow ferry to the island during the day to capture the whole beauty of Santorini. Oh well.
We said goodbye to our new friends with hopes of running into each other on the island. I hope that they are reading this and reminiscing about the trip! ;) Then we caught the bus headed for Fira and traversed our way up the cliff and over to Fira to find the Hotel Loucas. Finding the hotel at 2 AM was another story....

... to be continued...

More on Greece to come, just need to catch up. I'll probably be typing the whole flight home. :)

The Island of Sifnos

We arrived by ferry into Sifnos at 11:15 p.m. on Thursday night. The ferry ride wasn’t much to report, Nathan and I were so tired that we took turns reading and nodding off. It was a decent ride, nearly 3 hours long. The boat was the Speed Runner 3, huge and monstrous, with room for all of the passengers up top, and room for people with their cars on the bottom. We had seat assignments which came in handy, but the boat wasn’t completely full anyway. We were very extremely tired, having trekked all over Athens for the whole day without a comfortable home base. We were hot, sweaty, and had been wearing our same clothes that we flew in the day before.
When we arrived in Sifnos, it was obviously night time and dark outside. Nathan and I made the “exodus” off the boat with the other passengers and then kinda looked at each other in a “now what?” type of manner. The two taxis that were available were claimed immediately by other passengers, leaving us to further wonder what the heck we were supposed to do. So we started walking down the main street, hoping another taxi would arrive. No such luck. I decided to ask a guy who worked for the Greek Coast Guard if he knew of our hotel. “Yes, Hotel Margado! Go 300 meters that way” as he pointed straight up the gigantic hill. Awesome. So we walked back the way we came and came to a fork in the road, one that went back to the dock and one that went up hill. I asked again, this time, asked a car rental guy. “Ah, yes, hotel Margado.” He gestured with his hands and said, “Go up there, then leeeft, riiiight, and then leeeeft and then riiiiiight.” OK? So we started walking, rather, climbing these steep hills with two large suitcases, Nathan’s messenger bag and both of my camera bags. I immediately was hit with memories of being lost in Lugano… the first day I had arrived there, meandering around and trying to find our residence with three other students that I had met. It was already 11:30 at night and I really didn’t want to be aimlessly wandering around Kamares, Sifnos. With the help of my wonderfully strong gallant husband, we made it up the three large slopes with all of our bags. The incline on the last hill up to the hotel was, no joke here, literally, 45 degrees. I was tempted to get my iPhone out, download the leveling App, and then see exactly what the angle was. Ha ha ha. Nathan made the trek up the hill first with his messenger bag, and hauling our two rolling suitcases behind him, me slowly and breathlessly following him, still not knowing if this is exactly where we should be going. Alas, at the top of Mt. Everest, was the Hotel Margado. It took us 5 minutes to catch our breath and head up more stairs to where the owner, Stella, was waiting for us by the beautiful terrace and pool area.
I told Stella, in a breathless voice, “We’re the Wilcke’s, we have a reservation.”
She replied with this, “Ah, yes, but you were supposed to go to the travel agent office and have them call me to come get you and bring you up here.”
WHAT? You mean we could have had a RIDE?
She continued, “The travel agent was supposed to inform you of this transfer? No?”
“No, we had no idea, so we walked.”
“Oh, ok, I call them.”
So she called them and seemed pretty upset at the agency, complaining that they hadn’t told us about her plan to come and get us. I was a bit, no, I was really mad.
Stella got us all settled in our room, a very plain room with two twin beds pushed together, but a nice balcony with a view of the port. All in all, it was a fine room, but with one the Euro style showers that I despise… itsy bitsy teeny weeny shower that when you turn it on, it gets everything wet in the bathroom. The Europeans just don’t shower like Americans. No wonder they stink. Ha.
Nathan showered, I showered, and then we both passed out and slept solidly, with only a thin sheet to cover us, until 9 AM the next morning. Ahhhhhhh, sleep.
We woke up in the morning and headed up for breakfast. I was expecting something a LITTLE more lavish than one kind of cheese, one kind of meat (looked like bologna), and like 8 different kinds of bread. There was one kind of cereal, which I chose to eat, strained Greek Yogurt, syrup, and jellies. The coffee was gross, just like Ana and Sandra had warned. Even sugar didn’t help. It just has a ‘funk’ to it… can’t really decide what that is exactly.
Anyway, after a huge let down of a breakfast (mind you, I wasn’t expecting an American style of breakfast anyway having had previous European experience), we showered and headed out.
We asked Stella if she would give us a ride down to the town’s center and she said, “No. I do the transfer only, but you should rent a car anyway. You only have one day to see the island, and it is much better to have a car than take the bus.”
After a bit more talking we decided that she was right, so she got on the phone and found us a car to rent for the day. A guy from Apollo car company agreed to come up to the Margado and get us to bring us from Kamares to Apolonia to sign for the car, but in a half hour or so. That was fine, to us, so we went back and got online, and researched a little more where we should venture with our car for the day. Between the tips we got from Stella, and the stuff I’d read in our Greek travel book and online, we had a pretty good plan of how to spend our day.
The guy, for fun, I’ll call him Apollo, picked us up wreaking of body odor. He spoke decent English and drove us to Apolonia to the car rental office. On our way, the 5 kilometer curvy drive around the island to the capital, he was telling us about the island and where we should go.
“If you follow the asphalt, it goes to all the important places.” Fair enough, okay. “Platy Gialos is very nice, it has big biches, and Vathy has biches too.” Yes, yes, he was saying biches, not beaches. Nathan and I had a good laugh about this later, and about how we would get to see so many big bitches. ;)
By the time we got on our way to start around on our Sifnos escapade, it was noon. We headed to Vathy, which is a small, very quiet town with lots of rooms to “let” and a thin but long beautiful beach with a bay. Cars are not allowed to drive in the town, so the are all to be parked in the parking lot just outside the town. We parked our cute little Chevy in gravel parking lot by one of the several olive trees and walked to the bay. There were plenty of restaurants on the shore, but there was one, Manolis, that we wanted. I had read about it on Matt Barret’s website about Sifnos, claiming that it had the best clay pot baked food on the island (one of the island specialties). We walked the wrong way first, which was okay by us, we got to see more of the restaurants and locals hanging out on the beach.
We found Manolis a bit later, and sat down to have lunch. I was intrigued and wanted to try another one the island’s specialty, chick pea stew cooked in a clay pot. I pointed to this item on the menu when the waiter took our order, and he replied with, “It has peppers, tomatoes, and rice.”
“Ok,” I said, sounds good.
Nathan ordered Mousaka, a beer (Mythos- yummy), and I tried Nescafe for the first time (by suggestion of my friend that had been to Greece before). Instant coffee. Are you kidding me? Ha. Where is STARBUCKS??? ;) I did see one in Athens….
Turns out that I hadn’t ordered what I thought I had ordered because when I received my food, I was presented with a stuffed green pepper with rice and a stuffed tomato with rice. Oooooooooooh? Wait. I thought I ordered the chick pea stew… Oh well. I ate it anyway and told Nathan that I would just have to get chick pea stew at dinner for an appetizer.
Nathan’s mousaka was delicious. It was layered like a lasagna with ground beef, cooked eggplant, and then mashed potatoes mixed with cheese for a devilishly delicious fattening top. He really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed a few bites of it myself.
At one point while we were sitting there at our table, Nathan said to me, “It took me a minute but I finally just realized what that is that she hung up over there. It’s an octopus.” HUH? I looked at him.
Indeed, the British gal staying in the B&B next to Manolis had hung up an octopus on the clothes line to dry in the sun. Really? Sick. So I took pictures of it. ;)
When I went over there, the girl, not really expecting me to speak English launches out with, “Everyone is taking pictures of my….” and then she noticed that I was looking at her and she stopped.
“I’m sorry,” I laughed, “That’s just so bizarre! We don’t eat octopus in the U.S.” Her husband told me that they were charging 20 Euro for a picture, but the first one was free. Ha ha, LOL silly Brit. No, he was really nice.
We finished up our not-so-good stuffed peppers and tomatoes and wonderful mousaka and headed out of Vathy to Platy Gialos for the bich, oh, I mean beach. Since we had rented a car it was easy enough to bring our suits with us. We had to buy a few towels at a local mini mart, but no big deal. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the coast of Platy Gialos, Sifnos sitting next to a young American couple from Tampa. Ha…
At 5 p.m. we wrapped up our beach time and headed back to our hotel in Kamares. We got showered and cleaned up and headed for the “not to be missed while in Sifnos” town of Kastro. Oh wow, did it live up to what we expected. We were told by Stella (owner of our B&B) to go at dusk/sunset because it’s so hot up there. We followed her lead and did what she said. The sun was setting, giving me an open shade paradise to photograph, white walls with blue doors, flower pots, and a white church stuck out on it’s own volcanic rock with the nearly full moon rising just above it. WOW. Amazing. Nathan sure was a sport letting me take my time to capture the shots, even holding lenses for me while changing them on my camera. What a sweetie. ;)
We headed to Apolonia, the island’s capital for dinner and the night life. We had dinner at a restaurant on the tiny “main drag” street; it was the main street for bars and restaurants, not wide enough for 5 people to walk side by side.
We splurged a bit and had a very good bottle of Greek Syrah with dinner, Thema a regional wine of Drama. I had my highly anticipated chick pea stew (served in a clay pot just like they said) and had another clay pot dish for my main course, pork with white wine and some kind of herb that I didn’t recognize. It was tasty, but I liked the chick pea stew the best. Nathan had meatballs with gruyere cheese. He enjoyed it very much, the meatballs were very tender.
I was on the hunt for something sweet after dinner, and about had a heart attack when I saw an ice cream/gelato place. Mmmm, hazelnut gelato in a sugar cone. I had worked for that, walking up those dang hills to that hotel, walking all over Athens, walking all over Sifnos. I definitely earned that gelato.
We had a night cap at one of the many bars lining this main street while waiting for the Friday night “nightlife” to begin. The clock struck 11 and no one else was even IN the bar. We decided to go back to the hotel and go to bed. So much for a night out on the town, probably a good thing since Nathan had to navigate the exceptionally tiny and winding roads of Sifnos in our rental car. I really gotta say that he was an amazing driver.
We woke up on Saturday morning and got our stuff ready to leave Sifnos. We packed up and took our car down to the town center for Apollo to pick it up (the biches guy). We had breakfast, thin omelets with ham and cheese, coffee and juice, and then boarded our ferry to Milos. Pulling out of Sifnos was beautiful, but it got even better as we approached Milos and saw the island of Kimolos. We had to stop there to exchange passengers for a few minutes, and then we were off to Milos. What a beautiful boat ride!
Thankfully, when we got to Milos, our hotel was in short walking distance from the port on a flat road. Oh thank heaven. We got settled into our room and just had lunch at Flisvos in the town’s center square… cheese pies (not that great even with a high recommendation from the guy who wrote our Lonely Planet book), green salad and chicken soulvlaki (sp?), basically a kebab of chicken and fries. I still have yet to be blown away with the great food that Greece supposedly has somewhere that I’ve heard about. Maybe in Santorini… ha.

Seriously... it's all Greek to me.

September 3, 2009


Nathan and I are in Athens! We arrived this morning bright and early at 8:10, a whopping hour ahead of schedule. Usually, I’m all about being early on a flight, however, when you already have a 10 hour layover in an unfamiliar city with a very unfamiliar language, I’d have preferred to get an extra hour of sleep on the plane. Albeit we were in business class, so we got to lie down for the whole trip, it’s nothing compared to a real bed.

We each slept, probably not as long as we had hoped to rest, but at least we weren’t wide awake all night. Breakfast came way too early for us today, it was served to us somewhere around 1 a.m. our time.

Since we didn’t have any plans for today, and we had endless hours to spend, we decided to go the tourist route. We bussed it over to Pireaus port, checked our suitcases into a pretty sketchy “baggage check” and hit the road. Since I have way too much camera stuff here with me, I was rolling my big black bag and my medium camera bag around the city of Athens. The light at the end of THAT tunnel is that once we finally get situated in Sifnos tonight, I can rearrange my bags so I’m not carrying too much equipment with me at once.

We headed from Pireaus (via the metro) to the center of Athens, near Plaka, to have lunch. Lunch was mediocre, but it was a fun experience at a café. No big deal. I ordered the Greek Salad, because WHY NOT, right? Turns out it’s not really what we expect as salad as Americans, it was a few (like 3) leaves of lettuce, onions, olives, a brick of Feta, which I love, but mostly cucumbers and tomatoes. I don’t really care for either of the latter, but I did enjoy my olives and feta with 3 leaves of lettuce.

After lunch, we decided to try to go to the Acropolis. What a flippin’ adventure. Since we were on the side of it, instead of trying to find the actual entrance, we ended up going through tiny walkways between people’s front doors with signs that said “Acropolis -->”. Finally we got so miffed with ourselves (because we were so hot and tired of carrying my dang bags) that we decided to go back down and try to find the actual entrance. Even after that we still didn’t make it to the top. Instead, we chose to go to the Acropolis Museum which had two main benefits: a bathroom and air conditioning. Nathan wasn’t felling so hot so we hung out there, walked around a bit and just tried to relax. After we decided to get out of there, we found our way to a metro stop and hopped on the metro to bring us back to Pireaus. So that leaves me here, sitting, in an open door café, waiting, and waiting, and waiting for our boat to take us to Sifnos. Just get me to an island already!